Written by Mark MacNamara. Originally: "Dialog With Stone," a traveler's digression begun in 2004, with entries From Africa, Europe and North America. Now: a ramble-jam through the countryside of American culture, high and low, real and imagined.

Nov 6, 2012

We all sit down to dinner a little nervously. The drama has been foretold and now the couple is finally here, after a long drive up the coast. They sit together on one side of the table. He's 18; she's 40. They seem comfortable, with each other and with the thought that they are being judged. We've been warned that this is a tremendous scandal and that the boy's mother cannot even speak about it. 'It's beyond contemplation,' she's been telling friends, 'the young man's life is going to be ruined. The woman must be mad. How selfish could a person be? What must her husband be thinking' As the bread basket circles, I am reminded. Once upon a time I was in those shoes. And the woman was just like this. Blonde, separated, with a daughter, a complete romantic, and reckless, a stunning blend of transparency and secrecy, with pale blue eyes and endlessly sensuous, endlessly adventurous, running off this way and that, forever awaiting the Hodgkins disease she knew was coming to kill her.

I'm about to go speak to the crowd here in
Chicago, but I wanted to thank you first. I want you to know that this wasn't fate, and
it wasn't an accident. You made this happen. You organized yourselves block by block. You
took ownership of this campaign five and ten dollars at a time. And when it
wasn't easy, you pressed forward. I will spend the rest of my presidency
honoring your support, and doing what I can to finish what we started. But I want you to take real pride, as I do, in
how we got the chance in the first place. Today is the clearest proof yet that, against
the odds, ordinary Americans can overcome powerful interests.There's a lot more work to do.But for right now: Thank you.Barack